Cobalt - Gin

Cobalt stirred quite a lot of noise when they released Gin back in 2009. It even won some awards for the best album of the year and so on. That's not really important when it comes down to it. Before Gin they had a steady stream of albums. Some were good (like bird eater) and some were okay in a mediocre okay way. Gin on the other hand took me by a surprise. I didn't expect much but I received more than I could ever possibly want. The community seems to register this band as a war metal band. I'm not really sure as to what that specifically means; this sounds basically as a thrashed out black metal. It has relatively catchy riffs, not that much tremolo-ing and screaming vocals in a grunty way. Or something like that, I lost my creative words somewhere to be able to explain the sound.

What's interesting about this band is that the two members of it rarely see each other. One is in the military serving somewhere in Korea (I think, I don't feel like checking out that at the moment) while the other lives in the US. According to an interview I saw they meet up every year or so to record an album. It's almost like one of those internet bands. In any case this actually gives them a lot of freedom and time to think about their compositions and how they will eventually play it out when they meet each other. This system so far turned out to work great and this album is a solid proof of it. It's exceptionally good and I warmly recommend it to any metal enthusiast. The only downside is that there are no (official) lyrics.

Download.